The COVID-19 cases in the country keep rising, despite the lockdowns and a high rate of Filipinos using face masks. Why do we continue to have the highest number of cases in Southeast Asia? What are the successful practices of other nations that the Philippines cannot seem to do?
I believe successful nations have done contact tracing on a massive scale. Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and New Zealand used contact tracing. In Baguio, former police officer and now Mayor Benjamin Magalong even did tracing without waiting for test results. If it looked like a COVID-19 case, the Baguio health department would take immediate action. That city now has only 220 cases, and all have been monitored.
Why hasn’t the national health department done the same thing? Only now, eight long months after the COVID-19 crisis hit, has the Department of Finance started to hire contact tracers. And now, Tesda has announced that contact tracing online classes have started. Why wasn’t this done in March, when it would have been much easier to trace contacts when our infected population was only about 200?
Truly, the Department of Health and the administration have been sitting on their hands on this issue, endangering our economic and health security.
Jonathan Foe
jonathan_foe@hotmail.com